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‘He obviously cannot control his own people and became a weak reed in the process.’

3A piece of thin cane or metal, sometimes doubled, that vibrates in a current of air to produce the sound of various musical instruments, as in the mouthpiece of a clarinet or oboe, at the base of some organ pipes, and as part of a set in the accordion and harmonica.

‘Here I must admit that for bassoon reeds, a decade or so of advanced macramé at night school is a sound investment.’

‘She had just attached the reed to the mouth piece when she realized, ‘Oh my gosh!’’

‘Digital processing morphs the clarinet's mournful tones into deep sinewave swoops, zooms in on the crackle of spit on the reed or squeezes out didgeridoo-like overtones.’

‘She hoped no one noticed her bright cheeks as she attached the reed to her mouth piece.’

‘She finished assembling Roxanne and fastened the reed to the mouthpiece.’

‘One refreshing shower of raindrops between rehearsal and concert and the oboe reed's hardness and pitch-stability may well be altered.’

‘Initially this was not possible: his Symphonium of 1829 required lung power to supply the air to its metal reeds, with the player using keys to select the desired note.’

‘In the harmonium the action of the bellows blows air past the reeds.’

‘Coren was sucking on a saxophone reed, listening to them talk.’

‘One teenager checks the reed of his clarinet and practises phrasing.’

‘If it has a mouthpiece or a reed, Al can produce sublime music on it, often switching effortlessly between trumpet, saxophone and clarinet on the same gig.’

‘Of course, no oboe reeds were available locally, so I bought the oboe without having any idea whether or not it could play.’

‘It employs a single reed and has a very pure tone with no vibrato although this can be induced by use of the bellows.’

‘Possibly a distant ancestor of the modern bassoon, the instrument had a space at one end which almost certainly held a reed which generated the sound.’

‘The finished bassoon reed can last for several weeks if not months.’

‘I speak from experience when I say that a mouldy reed has neither the taste nor the sound of a clean reed.’

‘Wind instruments are tuned by adjustment to the length of tubing, using the tuning-slide on a brass instrument, the staple of the reed on an oboe, or the movable top joint of a flute, etc.’

‘The physical process of making sound with a reed is clearly not the same as it is for a transverse flute.’

‘The khaen is a collection of bamboo pipes of different lengths, each with a small hole for fingering and a metal reed, preferably of silver, all attached to a mouthpiece.’

‘Feeling melancholy, he fashioned the cut reeds into the musical instrument that bears his name - the pan-pipe.’

3.1A wind instrument played with a reed.

‘In Saracenic armies, bands composed of reeds and pipes of various sorts played during combat to encourage their own troops and to show that the line remained unbroken.’

‘Youssou N'Dour worked with Fathy Salama, who arranged and conducted his orchestral group of violins, reeds, flutes, and percussion.’

‘Al is a rare multi-instrumentalist, able to alternate on reeds and trumpet with equal artistry over an evening.’

‘The combination of percussion and reeds, and the frenzied pace of some of the pieces, creates some uncanny parallels with Moroccan trance music.’

‘The Beast isn't even an electronic record as such, as Michel records himself on guitar, drums, melodica, horns, reeds, keys, the list goes on.’

‘For the next few days I worked on packing up snare drums, clarinets, reeds and so many other things.’

3.2An organ stop with reed pipes.

4An electrical contact used in a magnetically operated switch or relay.

‘By bouncing, the reed breaks an electrical circuit.’

5A comblike implement (originally made from reed or cane) used by a weaver to separate the threads of the warp and correctly position the weft.

6reedsA set of semicylindrical adjacent moldings like reeds laid together.

‘One easily accounts for the 3 small sinkings on the Doric capital: they represented the strings that tied the original bundled reeds together to make them strong to bear great weight.’

‘In order to give the stucco a hold on a wooden wall or ceiling reeds are nailed to the surface beforehand, providing a ‘key’.’

Origin

Old English hrēod, of West Germanic origin; related to Dutch riet and German Ried.